In two days the German advance had reached its limit—a long narrow salient south of the Marne, representing a progress at the most of 6 miles from the old battle-front. The time had now come for Foch’s counterstroke. He had resolved to thrust with all his available reserves against the weak enemy flank from Soissons southward. There, in the shelter of the woods of Villers-Cotterets, lay the army of Mangin, who first won fame at Verdun. The morning of the 18th dawned after a night of thunderstorms and furious winds. There was no gunfire on the French side, but at 4.30, out from the shelter of the woods came a great fleet of French light tanks, and behind them on a front of 35 miles the French and American infantry crossed the parapets. Before the puzzled enemy could realize his danger they were through his first defences. The advance of the 18th was like a great bound forward. The chief work was done by Mangin’s left wing, which at half-past 10 in the morning held the crown of the Montagne de Paris, on the edge of Soissons. All down the line the Allies succeeded. Sixteen thousand prisoners fell to them and some 50 guns, and at one point Mangin had advanced as much as 8 miles. Foch had narrowed the German salient, crumpled its western flank, and destroyed its communications. He had wrested the initiative from the Germans and brought their last offensive to a dismal close. He had done more, though at the time no eye could pierce the future and read the full implications of his victory. Moments of high crisis slip past unnoticed. It is only the historian in later years who can point to a half-hour in a crowded day and say that then was decided the fate of a cause or a people. As the wounded trickled back through the tossing woods of Villers-Cotterets, spectators noted a strange exaltation in their faces. When the news reached Paris the city breathed a relief which was scarcely justified with the enemy still so strongly posted at her gates. But the instinct was right. The decisive blow had been struck. When the Allies breasted the Montagne de Paris that July morning they had, without knowing it, won the Second Battle of the Marne, and with it the war. Four months earlier Ludendorff had stood as the apparent dictator of Europe; four months later he and his master were fleeing to a foreign exile. [Illustration: The Second Battle of the Marne.] *CHAPTER XIII.* *THE BEGINNING OF THE END.*